The Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Travel and Tourism Board has created instagram-Filter-to-Make-Visitors-Aware-of-Safe-Distances-for-Wildlife-Photos”>An open source instagram filter to help visitors assess whether they are a safe distance from wildlife to take photos. The board hopes the tool will help better protect tourists visiting wildlife destinations — and the animals they are observing — during the busy summer travel season.
To use the filter, visitors to the valley and wilderness recreation area must open the Selfie control filter On the instagram app, after selecting the type of wildlife they are viewing, tourists must line up the animal's outline with its icon. If the actual animal is larger than the icon, then they are too close and must back away.
Jackson Hole, like nearby Yellowstone National Park and other wildlife destinations, offers tourists guidance on how much space to give animals based on their species. Visitors must give bears, for example, at least 100 yards of space, while Jackson Hole instructs tourists to give other animals, such as elk, at least 25 yards of space.
However, it can be difficult to tell if you're at least 100 yards away just by sight, which is why the board developed the filter. It's also why Jackson Hole created it. open sourceso other natural destinations can also download the code and create their own versions.
“We want to see an increase in the number of stunning wildlife images and a dramatic decrease in incidents and accidents,” said Crista Valentino, executive director of the Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board.
Over the years, there have been several highly publicized cases of visitors getting dangerously close to wildlife in national parks. Recently in AprilA tourist visiting Yellowstone National Park was injured by a bison and arrested after getting too close.
According to a 2018 study from a scientific journal One HealthBison injured more people than other animals in Yellowstone National Park between 2000 and 2015. The National Park Service says Yellowstone is home to the largest population of bison on public lands in the U.S., and that's likely why. However, One Health The study also noted that 48 percent of injuries occurred after visitors got too close to the animal to take photos.
